Without deviating from the core concepts (i.e. the seven principles) and not adding to the existing confusion surrounding web 2.0,

A web 2.0 FAQ would be as follows ..

What is web 2.0? : It’s the intelligent web.

What makes it intelligent? We (the people) do.

How does it happen? : By harnessing collective intelligence

What do you need to harness collective intelligence? : The six principles of web 2.0 except principle two(which itself is ‘Harnessing collective intelligence’ !

To me, web 2.0 makes perfect sense if you observe that – of the seven principles – all the other principles feed into the second principle(harnessing collective intelligence)

Let me explain ..

web 2.0 can be described as the ‘Intelligent web’ or ‘Harnessing collective intelligence’(which is the second principle of web 2.0)

The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge is intelligence. Knowledge is the sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, or learned.

What kind of intelligence can be attributed to the web? How is it different from web 1.0?

IMHO – web 1.0 was hijacked by the marketers, advertisers and the people who wanted to stuff canned content down our throat! Take away all that after the dot com bubble and what’s left is the web as it was originally meant to be – a global means of communication.

The intelligence attributed to the web(web 2.0) arises from us as we begin to communicate.

Thus, when we talk of the ‘Intelligent web’ or ‘harnessing collective intelligence’ – we are talking of the familiar principle of wisdom of crowds

Merely managing a community is not web 2.0! as many web 2.0 masqeraders will find out no doubt soon.

In order to harness collective intelligence

a) Information must flow freely

b) It must be harnessed/processed in some way – else it remains a collection of opinions and not knowledge

c) From a commercial standpoint, there must be a way to monetise the ‘long tail’ – but that’s the topic of another blog!

My essential argument is – if we consider web 2.0 as ‘Intelligent web’ or ‘Harnessing collective intelligence’(Principle two) – and then look at the other six principles feeding into it – it’s all a lot clearer

b) Independence: People’s opinions aren’t determined by the opinions of those around them.

c) Decentralization: People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.

d) Aggregation: Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

Conversely, the wisdom of crowds fails when

a) Decision making is too centralized: The Columbia shuttle disaster occurred because the hierarchical management at NASA was closed to the wisdom of low-level engineers.

b) Decision making is too divided: The U.S. Intelligence community failed to prevent the September 11, 2001 attacks partly because information held by one subdivision was not accessible by another.

c) Decision making is imitative – choices are visible and there are a few strong decision makers who in effect, influence the crowd

Now .. let’s look at the seven principles again ..

1. The Web As Platform

The web is the only true link that unites us all together whoever we are and wherever we are in the world. Hence, to harness collective intelligence and to create the intelligent web – we need to include as many people as we can. The only way we can do this is to treat the web as a platform and use open standards. You can’t harness collective intelligence using the

Amazon.com’s web services are provided in two forms: one adhering to the formalisms of the SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) web services stack, the other simply providing XML data over HTTP, in a lightweight approach sometimes referred to as REST (Representational State Transfer). While high value B2B connections (like those between Amazon and retail partners like ToysRUs) use the SOAP stack, Amazon reports that 95% of the usage is of the lightweight REST service.

6. Software Above the Level of a Single Device

More devices to capture information and better flow of information between these devices leads to a higher degree of collective intelligence

7. Rich User Experiences

A rich user experience is necessary to enable better web applications leading to more web usage and better information flow on the web – leading ofcourse to a more ‘Intelligent’ web.

And you need look no further than this blog .. itself a collaborative exercise and hopefully adding to the intelligence of the web itself

Thoughts/comments welcome at ajit.jaokar at futuretext.com

Note: I first heard of the phrase ‘Intelligent web’ from Michiel de Lange’s comment on another blog which referred to one of my older posts.

Comments

Ajit at Open Gardens makes what seems like a small observation (see Open Gardens: A web 2.0 FAQ), that the principle that should take precedence in Tim O’Reilly’s list of Web 2.0 features is the second: harnessing collective intelligence. This